I would like to commend Louis Delvoie and reinforce his plea for more attention to be paid to them. They have suffered from violent displacement since 1947-48, the ill effects of sadly unnecessary wars, old and unpopular leadership and international neglect, and they need what we all want: some hope and justice.

As the lone Canadian travelling for a dozen days in Israel and Palestine with two dozen American members of an interfaith peace group in November, I have seen and heard just what it’s been like to be a Palestinian since 1948 and 1967.

Nearly two weeks of meeting young, committed Palestinian activists and brave anti-Zionist Israeli Jews from Jaffa to the Negev Desert was a shocking exposure to just how unjust some people can be and how hopeless the ideal of a two-state solution has apparently become.

But despite 70 years of Israeli efforts to encourage them to leave their homeland or restrict their lives and ambitions to native reservations, there are still young Palestinians who need to be heard. They want to discuss an equal and democratic Jews and Palestinians one-state solution and the need for a civil rights campaign. After all, it worked against apartheid South Africa and in the American south. They see themselves as the pre-1948 indigenous population majority with the same indigenous rights to a decent future for themselves and their descendants as anyone of us.

While Donald Trump’s Jerusalem move and his slashing of UNWRA funding for the refugees are just adding to inevitable Palestinian anger and hostility, surely Canada and other human rights-supporting countries can finally step in to bridge the widening gap between two peoples. The age of a problem doesn’t mean it’s insoluble.

I fully support Lee Berthiaume’s article on Canada’s peacekeeping status. However, it’s not just peacekeeping on the ropes. Was it just two and a half years ago that we were all pumped up with new Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and all the great things he had promised for our men and women in uniform? What he has given us is a worn-out fleet of fighter jets he promises to keep going until the 2030s; old seagoing freighters done over to support the RCNs aging ships and subs; and the Army, well they got new ranks! And for the defence of our North? Oh, the U.S.A. will look after that for us. What a shame!

John Morrison

Kingston

There are many sides to ongoing conflict

The Blighted Palestinians, a column by Louis Delvoie in the Jan. 20 edition of the Whig-Standard, uses subtle language choices to make it appear as if the blame for the Palestinians’ troubled situation falls almost completely on Israel, in addition to absurdly blaming Israel for the problems in Lebanon. As in all good revisionist writing of history, there is an element of truth to Mr. Delvoie’s narrative. Yes, Israel is not blame free, but the question is: Is Israel overwhelmingly responsible for Palestinians not having a state of their own as Delvoie suggests, or more unfortunately a victim of bad circumstances.

Delvoie writes, "The agony of the Palestinians began in 1948 with the proclamation of the state of Israel. This gave rise to the first Arab-Israeli war." The truth is, in 1948 the proclamation was for a state of Palestine and a state of Israel, but the Palestinian and Arab leaderships refused their state. The Arab-Israel war didn’t miraculously rise up. The surrounding Arab states told the Arab (Palestinian) populations of the one-day-old state of Israel and the lands that would have been the state of Palestine to vacate the land for a short duration so they could destroy Israel and its Jewish inhabitants. They then attacked the state of Israel.

Then Delvoie writes, "The Palestinians suffered another serious blow as a result of the third Arab-Israeli war in 1967. When the Israeli army occupied the Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and the West Bank of the Jordan, thousands more Palestinians fled for the most part to the kingdom of Jordan." Delvoie neglects to tell the readers that the surrounding Arab countries had amassed their armies on the border of Israel, poised to attack, with their stated aim to drive the Jewish inhabitants into the sea. Yes, Israel won the war, but within weeks, Israel offered to withdraw from the lands it captured in a defensive war in return for recognition by the Arab states. The response, at the Arab Summit in Khartoum following the Six-Day War, was the adoption of The Khartoum Proclamation, known as the three noes: "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel."

Delvoie goes on to suggest that the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin following the Oslo Accord by Jewish extremist was the cause of future Israeli governments’ failure to make peace with the Palestinians. Nothing could be further from the truth. Israel’s willingness to make peace was exemplified with peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza, leaving behind significant greenhouse infrastructures for Palestinian use, which were immediately destroyed by the so-called moderate Palestinian Authority leadership not wanting anything tainted by Israeli hands. Did prosperity and good government break out in Gaza? No, resources were used to build tunnels into Israel to attack Israeli citizens, to build and fire missiles at Israeli towns and to convert hospitals and schools into military command centres. Two Israeli prime ministers post-Rabin offered peace deals to the Palestinian leadership that would have returned 95 per cent of the disputed lands to the Palestinians, plus five per cent of compensating lands from within Israel proper, plus a land corridor through the state of Israel connecting the West Bank and Gaza in return for peace and Palestinian recognition of the state of Israel. Both offers were turned down by the Palestinian leadership, who then encouraged Intifadas, violent uprisings, against Israelis. Many Israelis and citizens of other countries were killed in bombings, vehicle rammings and shootings by Palestinians.

All this didn’t help the peace process. Israel built walls to protect its citizens from the real and daily threats by Palestinians incited by their corrupt and inept government, a fact Delvoie in part acknowledges. Yes, right-wing and religious parties gained more influence in Israel, slowing the peace process. And, yes, the rights of Palestinians have suffered under Israeli occupation, sometimes inappropriately and illegally and sometimes necessarily because of constant terrorist attacks by Palestinians.

But ultimately a peace deal has been unattainable because of the Palestinian leadership’s unwillingness to face reality and recognize the state of Israel’s right to exist. From the very beginning in 1948, Israel accepted its state and the Palestinian leadership did not, not because they didn’t want a state, but because they didn’t want the Jews to have one. Until that fact changes, and likely the Palestinian leadership, too, the sorry state the Palestinian lives will unfortunately continue, but the fault will predominately fall on the Palestinian leadership and not on Israel as Delvoie proclaims

Edward Smith

Kingston

War created a dual refugee program

In a column published in The Kingston Whig-Standard on Jan. 20, Louis Delvoie reverts to historical revisionism when claiming that "The agony of the Palestinians began in 1948 with the proclamation of the state of Israel."

In fact, in 1948, the Arab world refused to agree to the existence of a Jewish state living side by side with what would have been a newly formed Arab state. The War of Independence saw combined armies of Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon invade the nascent state of Israel to annihilate it. The stated goal of this genocidal war was to rid the Arab world of the region’s, and the world’s, only Jewish state. Their intentions were declared by Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League at the time: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."

While Israel successfully fought off five united Arab armies, one of two fates awaited the Jews whose cities and towns were captured by the Arabs: massacre or forced expulsion. It must be noted that this Arab-instigated war created a dual refugee problem with over 800,000 Jews being forcibly expelled from their homes in Arab and Muslim countries (they were successfully resettled in Israel and other countries, whereas the Arab world forced approximately 800,000 Palestinians to live in squalor in refugee camps, not granting them citizenship, equal rights, etc.).

President Trump’s administration has legitimate concerns with UNRWA’s (United Nations Relief and Work Agency) definition of "refugee" status for Palestinians, as the overwhelming majority (over 99 per cent) of the 5.3 million Palestinians registered as refugees by UNRWA are "fake" refugees. In fact, they are merely descendants of refugees. Other concerns with UNWRA include its links to the Hamas terror group, its lack of neutrality, having weapons stored in its facilities and its staff’s incitement to violence, hatred and anti-Semitism. These reasons, and others, prompted the U.S. to freeze over $100 million in payments to UNWRA.

Reverting back to 1948, it must be known that most Arab Palestinians fled at the behest of Arab leaders. An order to get out of the way of the bloodshed the Arabs promised to inflict on the Jews. As Sir John Troutbeck, the head of the British Middle East Office in Cairo, stated during a 1949 fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip: "’We know who our enemies are’ they [the Arab refugees] will say, and they are referring to their Arab brothers who, they declare, persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes."

The "Nakba" (catastrophe) narrative perpetuated by Delvoie seeks to paint Palestinians as perpetual victims while portraying Israel’s creation as an original sin requiring of rectification. Importantly, since time immemorial, the root cause of the conflict is still the Palestinian refusal to accept the Jewish state’s right to exist.

Regrettably, readers of Delvoie’s article were treated to a one-sided view that painted the Palestinians as the sole victims. Untold is how billions of dollars of foreign aid money earmarked for needy Palestinians has ended up in the coffers of Palestinian politicians and arch-terrorists. Delvoie claims, "The Palestinians have continued to suffer at the hands of Israel," who he depicts as terrorists. In reality, it’s Palestinian terrorism in the form of suicide bombings, stabbings, rocket fire, shootings and car-ramming attacks that see Israelis suffer at the hands of Palestinians on a daily basis. Just last week, in fact, an Israeli Rabbi was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in a drive-by shooting. Israel’s military presence thwarts and deters relentless Palestinian terror. Would Delvoie prefer that Israel commit national suicide by removing these important security measures?

Sunlight is the best disinfectant to Delvoie’s efforts to grossly distort the historical record of the Arab-Israeli conflict.